Town

In Flanders fields, the poppies grow. Or, on the edge of the road outside of Brugge. Either way they're beautiful.

Our "city day" brought us to the medieval Brugge. It's beautiful, but crammed to the top with tourists (yes, us included) and more lace and chocolate shops than you can shake a stick at. It's picture postcard perfect. And that, my friends, is illiteration.

Brugge means bridges in either Dutch or Flemish, and the city is known as the Venice of the North. Which reminds me that Hamburg is known as the Venice of Germany. Maybe we should just leave Venice alone, no?

Remember how everyone stopped calling themselves tourists and insisted they were travellers instead? Well, we went waaaaay back and did some bone fide sight-seeing. We were shameless. Camera bag strapped across the chest, anyone?

We skipped the lace & chocolate and headed straight towards the home goods. There were a few gems. At the risk of sounded extra obnoxious, did you know there was a ZARA home store?!? Eloise fell in love with a beaded tassel and tried her best at convincing us of the necessity of owning it.

"I need purple hair" didn't quite cut it. 

I adored this kitchen store, the name of which is failing me. Something & Something, for sure. I bought the red & white twine for brown paper packages needing to be tied up with string. And Aaron was the lucky recipient of some fancy Belgian pancake mix.

Our feet aching and faces a little dewy, we stopped for a drink and a snack before crossing our final bridge back to the car. Our nice, air conditioned car that would endure us getting horribly lost through back-country roads. I have never heard so much early 90s soft rock, not even in the early 90s. The Belgians sure have a thing for Billy Joel.